Handy Dandy Guide To Sgt. Pepper
I'm probably the only pig on the planet who hasn't noticed it was forty years ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught us how to play. Since we've been on the subject (in a general sort of way), I present you with this link explaining the album's deepest mysteries. What will the four lads from Liverpool think of next?
Sgt. Pepper at 40, from A to Z
Sgt. Pepper at 40, from A to Z
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posted by Christopher Newton at 8:02 AM
2 Comments:
I'm remembering when Pepper came out. I was a kid and living in Phoenix that year. Even me, at a mere 11 years old realized that it was the biggest thing in my lifetime. San Francisco was far away but Pepper was onb the radio all day and night. Not a lot of it made big sense then but I did know that Paul played that electric line at the beginning of the title cut and not George. Man. It ripped through my pre-teen mind like a razor. I'd never heard that before.
My dad was wearing Nehru jackets and he had Neil Young sideburns. He played guitar in a folk group called the Cockroaches. We'd left Milwaukee that previous spring after months and months of civil rights marches. The city was getting tense and the folks figured Phoenix was a safer place for raising kids for the time being. Funny thing. We stayed there until the Democratic convention the following year, driving through Chicago as Mayor Daley's brownshirts were beating the shit out of everyone in sight.
I remember hearing Ringo singing, "A Little Help" as we were being diverted by the highway patrol around the warzone that was Grant park.
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only." -Charles Dickens
TO me, it's odd how the world is looking back on the Summer of Love with nostalgia (except for the right wing Christians who are not at all nostalgic about it). Think of all the other stuff that was happening in 1967 - the massive antiwar demonstrations for instance, and Black Power. They have at least as much to teach us as the flower children do.
Joan Baez said the difference between 1967 and 2007 is that then there was a great sense of purpose direction. Now it's all chaos.
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